


WWII Rogue One AU (Clara/Dean)

by soufflesandpies



Category: Doctor Who, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-27 06:30:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13242453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soufflesandpies/pseuds/soufflesandpies
Summary: Late 1940s. The war feels like it’s over. They’ve won, though no country, no alliance has taken over officially. They have simply become The Empire, a military giant that has gained the compliance of almost every major world entity.Still, there are rumors. In the looming shadow of the Empire, they share secrets about a plot to build a bomb that can shatter continents and reform the world in the wielder’s image. For most of the public, it isn’t true, but for the nascent Rebel Alliance the chance cannot be taken.At the helm of a major intelligence operation, Captain Clara Oswald discovers at the heart of all this madness a broken family, survived by a Dean Winchester. In their hands falls a responsibility that could turn the tide toward a crucial victory, if only they capture the plans to the Empire’s new weapon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Prologue**

He was too young to be taken by the devils who came busting down the door. But then again, so was she, and yet— she gave them a chance. While John kept the G-men at bay on the other side of the door, Mary Winchester was sending her boys through a slit in the wall of their little farm house that fed directly into a dark copse of trees.

“Just like when we were playing hide and seek,” she told her eldest. Like a mother in a fairytale sending her child away with a precious package for granny. This time, though, the wolves howled through their Silvertone radio. Were pawing at their door right now. Then, to clarify, “Take Sam to the place and wait for us there.”

Her son carefully cradled the tiny wriggling form. “But you’re coming with us, still. Right?”

“I’ll be right behind you,” she promised.

Mary never had the chance to take him to the moving picture shows. A little boy barely old enough to sit still for a whole feature film, he never learned what a lie looked like. But surely it couldn’t look like Mommy’s face peering out at him in dappled moonlight?

He stood still, considering, while she pulled a string from around her neck, over her golden hair, and wrapped the necklace twice around the package in his arms. The boy had never seen her without it.

“I’ll come back for that, Dean,” she said. As if her greatest treasure was an amulet and not a little boy who had grown legs and been taught to hide. Gently, she turned him around and pushed him through the hole in her house into the dark cover of the treeline. It was a mother’s oldest trick, Jochebed hiding Moses among the reeds. She sealed the wooden board back into place and quickly stuffed a pillow beneath her nightgown. She squinted in the porchlight as she came out to greet it.

As ever, the smiling man was wearing yellow. It was meant to imply weakness, to assure you that you had power over him. If you believed that he would only manipulate you to do worse. To work for him. To repair his watch or his gun or his radio, for his greater good. To allow him and his team of physicians to stick needles into your wife’s round belly to “ensure the child’s growth.” John Winchester had grown sick of it.

“What a sight!” said the man, though he did not seem to mean it. “Mary is still pregnant.”

John turned around, his eyes wide, searching her side for their son. His protectiveness almost made her smile.

“Mary, dear,” continued the man, “your husband was just telling me how you died in childbirth! Modern miracles, I suppose.”

Mary let the pillow fall and raised the gun she had hidden in its folds. She aimed the barrel at the man in the yellow suit, her thumb pulling the hammer back while the index flexed on the trigger. She did not waver. She was not afraid of the G-men behind her target. She was satisfied: their guns were trained at her chest and no one else’s.

“Mary, please…” said John.

“Yes, Mary, please be reasonable,” echoed the man.

“You’re not taking him,” she said.

“No, we’re not. We’re taking all of you.” he replied. “You, your husband, your two sons. You’ll live in comfort together.”

“As prisoners.”

The man laughed. “Where did you come up all of these ideas, Mary? You’ve stayed with us before. We gave you a life of luxury, did we not?”

“There is a price for everything, Azazel.”

He cocked his head to the side, eyes on her gun. He looked more curious, mocking, than threatened. “And is this your price?” he asked.

“Mary.” John’s eyes drove into her.The mere force of them was like a hand on her wrist, a comforting arm around her shoulder.

But Mary did not want that kind of comfort. No, she preferred another kind that inspired an image of her boys living free from this fascism, with or without her.

“Before you answer, Mary, I want you to think very carefully,” the man warned.

She already had.

“You’ll never win,” she said.

There was some resistance beneath her finger as her hand spasmed around the gun, like some part of the design made to tell its user to hold on and think again. And then, as if to punish the wicked, it kicked her shoulder painfully back in a mirror action to Azazel’s as the bullet buried itself in his own shoulder. He clasped a hand over the hole as it bubbled with blood. Fire sprang up around him, his men squeezing triggers. Mary danced horribly backwards, falling into her front doorway where she could spot the kitchen and the gas stove, as her world turned upside down.

She imagined seeing the particles of gas she’d freed from the stove before leaving the house now pouring out, colliding with the fire from the government-issued weapons and sending John flying backwards, away from the worst of it. She thought of this and wanted to laugh as the flame engulfed her and she fled into darkness full of hope.

 

Dean was not a bad boy. He obeyed his parents a little more than half of the time, but this time he knew time he should have obeyed completely and stayed hidden with Sam instead of coming back to watch Mommy and Dad talk to the man in the yellow suit.

Was it his fault? Were they talking about how he drew on the walls in the hallway?

The flash was too bright for his eyes to see. It flung him back into the underbrush, the twigs scratching at his back as they crunched beneath him. He would have just lain there longer if it weren’t for the voices in the darkness.

“He said they would try something stupid!” Another G-man, probably. His voice like the ones from the radio. “Search for survivors.”

Dean got up, his vision still stunted. Tear ducts still worked, though. Water tickled his cheeks as it flowed from his eyes. He tried to breathe deeply but only managed to suck snot into his throat.

Lights sliced through the darkness.

He had to be good this time. If he was good, Mommy would bake him a pie and let him top it with whipped cream. If he was good, Sammy and Daddy would be safe too.

So he ran, his hands splayed in front of him feeling tree after tree vanish behind him until they gave way to a high pile of large rocks. Beneath one was a tunnel where he would wait with Sam until Mommy came.

* * *

 

**Part One**

Paris had seen better days. They all had. Clara imagined everyone in the shuffling market square had stories to tell. Children separated from siblings. Would-have-been wives parted from lovers. But maybe she was being too romantic. The history of the city had that effect on her sometimes. Now, however, it seemed no one wanted to tell stories. They all were just trying to forget, to survive.

She, on the other hand, certainly had a story to tell. She practiced it on the ride over, could feel it dance on her tongue even now. It was her only weapon against questions, not having had enough time to forge more realistic papers before hopping off a small plane in a country under siege.

Something was brewing on the other side of the war. It was rushing recon missions, silencing informants. Hurrying her footsteps. She knew she had to have been drawing attention to herself, pushing aside men and women with shuffling gaits and downturned eyes. The behavior of prisoners. She pulled her hat lower over her eyes. Though some of them were not to be believed, the words of men in shady pubs came back to her. They said her eyes gave her away. They were too bright, too full of… well, something that Parisians would obviously lack while fascism’s flag waved over their heads.

She slipped into an alleyway between two leaning tenements.

“Finally,” a voice snapped. A man (she called him Vick) squatted on an upturned pail in the darkness. His face flickered with orange light as he took a drag on a rare cigarette, which also illuminated the red armband on his shoulder. “I was about to leave.”

“I came as fast as I could,” she said.

He heaved himself up against the wall with some difficulty. She could see why: His ankle was wrapped in a dirty splint.

“Do you have it?” he asked, now, towering over her.

She spluttered, throwing a glance back into the thoroughfare she had just left behind. “You won’t need it,” she said.

“Need? Who said anything about need?” Vick scoffed. “It’s a security measure, peach. Makes us better at our jobs. You know, like guns and soldiers.”

“Soldiers don’t point their gun at themselves.”

He took a puff and released the smoke through the side of his mouth. “No, but you gotta admit, our jobs would be a helluva lot easier if they did.”

Clara pursed her lips. She couldn’t argue that. From the collar of her dress she slipped out a white pill. In the case of an emergency (a dire emergency), she was supposed to lean her head down, bite, and swallow.

“You sure you won’t need that yourself?” he asked, with skeptical brow.

“I visited the dentist recently,” she replied. A cyanide-filled fake tooth. So many ways to get what they supposedly needed.

The man’s eyes narrowed, his gaze still quizzical. Then, he just took it from her hand and tucked it away.

Clara thrilled in the little victory, after weeks of trying to get the damn emergency poisons off her body. She’d pulled the tooth as soon as she had left the dental office. She wouldn’t be caught. She fancied herself a much better liar than any of her other men. In fact, just as Vick apparently didn’t know each spy was only meant to have one pill (his, she knows, he used to silence an informant), most of her men didn’t even know they operated as _her_ men.

He started suddenly towards her and the mouth of the alley. “I have to get back to my convoy,” he explained. “The others won’t wait for me after refuel.”

She stepped in front of him. “Wait. Where are you all going?” she asked. “Back to Jedha?”

He tried to slide past her, left, right. Like a dance. He’d have to squeeze to get past her. Or push.

Seeing him consider it, Clara brought her chin up, her shoulders squared. What she lacked in height she could make up for in _presence_.

“Report,” she commanded. “Tell me what you know right now, soldier. I know you missed your drop-off; I know you didn’t just lose your own nightshade pill; and for all you know, I might know a whole lot more about you that could get you court martialed, or worse.”

The spy blinked at her. “Fine,” he relented. “An Imperial cargo pilot— one of the ones on the Jedha run? He hasn’t been keeping his mouth shut. Defected yesterday.”

“What’s he been saying?”

“One of my little birds said he was going on about a weapon. A big one.”

Clara snapped back with an assuring response the Alliance was always using these days: “The Americans already have one.”

“Well, they—” His eyes indicated vaguely over her shoulder, “want a bigger one.”

“How big?” she asked.

Vick’s shoulders sagged as if his leg were tied down by more than just a sprain and a wrap. “Connie,” he said (for that’s how he knew her). The effect he was trying to have was one of gravity, hoping her supposed name would pull her back down from the grand delusion of the Alliance. “If they succeed, that whole island of yours can vanish. We’re not just talking about cities anymore.”

Clara tried to stop her mind from reeling, from fearing. A whole island. Schoolchildren, theatres, trains, everything gone. Instead she tried to zero in on the right questions, reprioritizing what she already knew, what her other men were set out to discover, what holes might be missing if she came back with the same answers as them, having asked the same questions.

But a weapon of mass destruction. This was the very thing they were endeavoring to prevent. And if the rumors were true, as Vick says…

“Who sent him?” she asked, suddenly.

“Sorry?”

“He’s just a cargo pilot, as you are a driver.” His cover, at least. “Before your little birds whispered in your ear, did you know for sure of a weapon?”

“No,” he said.

“Then who told the cargo driver?”

The irises of Vick’s eyes fled to the bottom right. His mouth quietly sounded out syllables he was trying to remember. “Started with a double-u.” He tried, “Winchester. I think. Some sort of scientist.”

She nodded as if that name immediately made sense to her, to make herself appear in full control of the situation. Internally, she was scrambling to bring to mind old reports, speculative discussions by higher intelligence officers, anything to discredit Vick’s memory, but the truth was discrediting in itself: The only Winchester she had read about was John, and he was a crazy old rebel whose lone-wolf ideology nearly shattered the Alliance. He was no Imperial scientist, although when he was an Imperial anything, he was a peon, a mechanic.

But he had family. He had a son.

Sons?

That just created too many holes, too many unknown variables.

“Have you anything else to report, soldier?” she asked.

But Vick’s eyes were staring over her head. Clara turned to see two stormtroopers blocking the mouth of the entrance as she had in front of Vick. Their ridiculous helmets and less ridiculous guns pointed casually in her direction, however, gave them much more presence than whatever she could muster.

“What’s going on here?” one asked.

“Just me and my girl, sir,” said Vick. His hand awkwardly hovered over her waist. She pressed it against her. Now was not the time to play shy.

“She asked you to report. Called you ‘soldier.’”

Behind her, Clara could feel the breath stop in Vick’s chest. She tried for a shy smile (and a Parisian accent). “ _I like soldiers_.”

The stormtroopers exchanged looks.

“Alright,” said the same one from before. “We’ll just need to see your papers before we send you on your way.”

Vick produced his first and handed them to Clara for her to pass forward.

Sweat started to bead on the back of her neck. This wasn’t meant to happen. Her papers weren’t as expertly doctored as they could have been, missing the raised seal of the Empire in the bottom left corner. Even Vick could see it missing over her shoulder before she passed all of their papers over.

Under the cover of the paperwork, two flashes sent the Stormtroopers tumbling to the ground. Smoke rose from the end of the illegal silencer attached to the end of Vick’s pistol.

Clara whirled on him. “You idiot!”

But Vick was already looking up for a way out. Gray sky peeked out between the tops of the tenements.

“Foot holes,” he said. “There, there, and there.”

“You can’t climb!” she said.

“I can run.”

“Your ankle!”

There were too many holes in this plan, but already he was shoving her towards the wall and forcing her leg up until her foot slipped onto one of the aforementioned holes. She gave in and began to climb.

In the street people were starting to notice the prone bodies of the officers. They were just civilians. They couldn’t help themselves from crying out, earning the attention of an Imperial street officer. He blew his whistle and more armed Imperial men sprinted out, seemingly from nowhere. They gathered at the mouth of the alley and gave short chase to the soldier limping through the crowd with the smoking gun burning his pocket.

Clara was just swinging her leg over the rooftop when the officers dragged him back to the alley. As she watched, Vick, lying supine beneath them, took swings at the unprotected faces of the Empire, shouting at her, at them, to _Get away! Get away!_

They caught one of his hands, cuffed the wrist, and brought it behind him. His other hand, she saw, wiped across his mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Suddenly, foam bubbled from his mouth as his body began to twitch horribly on the ground.Then the dance was over. His eyes stared lifelessly back at her.

Clara gasped.

Covering her traitorous mouth, she ducked down and pressed her back flat against the wall of the rooftop before anyone could trace the sound to the sky. She made a feeble attempt to steady her breathing.

On the plane back to base she closed her eyes and sorted the cards in her hand:

A defected Imperial cargo pilot with a loud mouth.

John Winchester, nominally a rebel. In practice, perhaps just an angry terrorist.

The Winchester family? Mary, deceased. The son, imprisoned. And now the possibility of another…

It was more information than she had gathered in weeks. Information that was turning a rumored weapon from speculation into cold hard metal in her mind.  
She revisited what she learned over and over with the hope that this knowledge, when relayed to base, would renew her purpose and drown out the dying shouts and struggles of one of her own.

 

Dean had been in plenty of trouble before. In fact, if you asked him yourself he’d probably admit that there were times when he actually deserved what the Empire dished out. Of course, he would not say more than that but his body told stories. Scars from bullet wounds, stripes down his back from old-fashioned lashings. The few times they tried to lock him up he also probably deserved, but he just didn’t have the time to see the punishment through. There was always another fight, another injustice he took upon himself to right.

This time, though, he had more than enough time. Or, more precisely, he had no more friends on the outside to dig him out. He’d used up his favors, gotten enough people killed that their families and friends turned their backs on him. So, he soaked up what he could of the luxuries offered by an Imperial prison. A cot, regular meals, air conditioning (even if it sputtered). His new cellmate was even a friendly guy.

“Do you want a warning?” he was asking, now. “Before I do it?”

“Yeah,” said Dean. “I want flashing lights, an announcer guy with a deep voice and a mic hanging from the ceiling, and a coupl’a girls in tiny shirts carrying around signs to count out the rounds.”

The man ignored him with a wistful sigh. “At last, a quiet cell.”

“What if I kill you first?” asked Dean. That wasn’t a part of the plan, just a fun question.

“Then I hope you like a quiet cell, Allen.”

Dean’s smile was hollow. His sentence was twenty years, but at this prison five was a death sentence. Wobani killed you slowly. They said they laced the water with little doses of poison. They said the darkness in which they held solitary prisoners drove them crazy enough to bash their heads against the wall.

He was going to die here. His tomb (if he would even get one) would bear a false name. Would his mother know where to find him to guide him to the Pearly Gates?

In the dark behind his eyelids, Mary appeared in her white nightgown. She was teaching him how to play with his new toy, this tiny bundle of warm milky breath and soft skin. _Support his neck. Hold his bottom. There you go._ He took Sam into his arms. That’s when blue petals erupted from his mother’s torso. The flames bloomed orange and swallowed her while she screamed, Sam howling in his arms.

Then, a stone rolled back. Light flooded in behind him. A creature, his father but also not his father, with blackened face and clothes wheezed his name that was also not his name.

 _Allen_. _Allen_.

“Allen,” said the prison guard. “Jimmie Allen. You’ve been marked for transfer.”

He would have preferred fieldwork to sitting in a van with his cellmate, three other prisoners, and a trio of guards, with his wrists cuffed to a chain linked to the floor. None of the other prisoners were looking at him, though, which he took as a good sign. If his cellmate planned on killing him now at least he didn’t have the advantage of numbers.

Then, the van lurched to a halt so sudden that the handcuffs cut deeper into Dean’s skin. There was shouting outside. The guards exchanged a glance.

“Nobody move!” ordered one.

His partners brought their weapons up as he slipped out of the transport. Dean heard a metallic _whomp_ and before either of the remaining guards could react, the doors flung open. Sunlight glared at them, these creatures of dark prison cells, as it ripped away their guards. Two balls of electricity pulsed loudly and followed the guards straight to sleep.

Men with guns hopped aboard the transport.

“Allen!” one shouted.

Dean could see no insignia on their battle-stained attire but he recognized their tactics. These were soldiers, and if they weren’t Empire, they were rebellion. And if they were rebellion that meant that they found him. Maybe they decided that they needed him, finally. His father needed him.

His hands curled into fists.

“Want to get out of here?” asked the rebel leader. He sounded as wary as Dean was of him.

Lacking any other choice, he nodded. The handcuffs fell to the floor between his feet. When he stood, blood rushed from his head and darkened his eyesight. The rebel started to say something when a prisoner farther down the transport made a commotion. The rebel turned, which Dean saw as his opening.

With his foot in the soft gut of the rebel grunt and his shoulder throbbing from shoving their leader, hard, into the side of the van, he was already halfway to freedom. Nothing but momentum now, Dean brought down the last rebel with his fist and leapt into the open air only to get knocked to the rocky ground. His head thumped against the metal bumper of the transport as he went down.

A shadow leaned over him.

“Congratulations,” it said. Irritated. Accented. (Maybe it was simply Scottish?) “You are being rescued. And for god’s sake, stop resisting.”


	2. Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean sits down with members of the Rebel Alliance and learns some new things about his family.

The rebels glared angrily at him as they nursed ice packs on the plane. For their own reassurance, they put Dean back in restraints and separated him from the other prisoners who had agreed to join their glorious Rebellion. A curtain hid him from their view in case they might start something at his signal.

When he woke he was led out of the aircraft and through a swarm of men walking with quick footsteps in all directions. Like his rescuers, they wore no uniforms, save the grave but determined expressions of men at the front lines of war. They were pilots, freighters, technicians, chattering as they walked with brisk importance to their jobs.

The men he'd come with (now bruised and bristling) left him slouched in a metal chair in the middle of a war room at a conference table. Shelving units instead of walls separated him from other, smaller workspaces. The ceiling was made of domed aluminum. Illuminated boards of charts and maps assaulted his eyes as he tried to get a sense of what this whole thing was. One thing was for sure. It was more than a mere rebel outpost where people plotted little acts of armed sedition. That ruled out his father. No, someone else wanted him.

He surveyed the faces that now approached the table. One was a man. He was stout, his hair thinning. His black suit was pressed and his eyes wary. The other was a woman. Her face was lined but stern. She was dressed as a man. Her close-cropped blond hair hung just above the padded shoulders of her pantsuit. She wasn’t very impressive but Dean could appreciate the effort. Bringing up the rear, a pretty secretary clutching a thick manila folder. She handed it to the man, who pretended to flip through its contents.

Already wary, Dean rolled out his neck, falling into the role of irritated informant.

This was an interrogation.

“Jimmie Allen. Cute name,” said the man. “Like the children’s radio show. I like it.” His voice was high. Accent indistinguishable, like he had spent too much time in America and got his English accent confused with theirs.

He pretended to read. “Arrested for possession of unsanctioned weapons, robbery of an Imperial base, sedition, aggravated assault on Imperial officers, resisting arrest… Now shall we add escape from Imperial prison to the list?”

“Only if you plan on charging me,” said Dean.

“Of course,” said the woman. Strict. English. “We can always put you back where we found you, but I wouldn’t like that. We’ve only just met.”

Dean narrowed his eyes at them so he could see them more clearly. This was a spiel. The woman was Good Cop and the man, with his unshaven face and buttoned black suit, was clearly Bad Cop.

“And besides,” said the man. “Imagine if the Empire found out who they really had on their hands. I mean, what would they do if they discovered they had their hands on John Winchester’s favorite son?”

Dean had been waiting for that, but still, he flinched at the name, the stripping of the facade. To recover, he dragged his lips up into a knife-sharp smile.

“Wait,” he said. “You _really_ think I'm his favorite?”

The man narrowed his eyes, until he realized, “Sarcasm. Now I see the Winchester resemblance. Speaking of family...” Again, he pretended to page through his folder (for show, Dean guessed; he had always made sure he left no paper trail), until finally the man seemed to find his favorite page. He read, “Dean Winchester. Son of John Winchester, war hero turned terrorist. And Mary Winchester, deceased.”

_Winchester, Winchester, Winchester._

Dean could strike him once, twice, until he knocked all of this man’s teeth out of his head, but it still wouldn’t be enough to get his family’s name out of his mouth. The thought sharpened the corner of his smile, but he couldn't help the distance that grew in his eye as he imagined staining his knuckles red with the guy’s face.

The man whistled. “Are you still with us, Mr. Winchester?” asked the man, rather unkindly.

_Did he have a choice?_

“Yeah, I’m with you. But you know, before we move on, I just gotta know– What is all of this?” Dean asked.

“A chance for you to make a new start,” replied the woman. “A chance to redeem yourself… and your father.”

Finally, an interrogation script he could follow.

“Can’t imagine it’ll be free.”

“No.”

Christ, this wasn’t the role he liked to play in these scenarios. But luckily he wasn’t tied down. Free to move about the cabin. Clearly, this wasn’t his brand of interrogation, which was good but also… much worse.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“We are UNIT,” she replied. “The intelligence branch of the Rebel Alliance. My name is Kate Stewart. I approved your extraction from Wobani. This is my colleague…”

“Canton,” the man filled in.

Dean peered at him more closely. He knew he’d looked familiar. “I've seen your picture before. You have a bounty on your head,” he said, because he was petty, because he spotted a vulnerability, because he’s been scrambling for a long time for an ounce of control over… anything. His own interrogation would do. “You’re a double agent. You called yourself Crowley.”

 _Canton_ sighed. “We all do what we must to protect our interests.”

“Oh, yeah? What are your interests now?” sneered Dean.

Now it was Canton’s turn to glare, his lip lifting in a snarl that said to _Keep to the script, boy._

Dean responded with that same sharp smile.

He was looking for something. The power in the room, the one who held all the cards. He knew interrogations. He knew there was always someone waiting behind the glass, watching.

Now, he knew it wasn't Canton. And Mrs. Good Cop? No way.

For her part, Kate waited a beat before she jumped back in. “This is Captain Oswald.”

Finally. Someone with authority. Dean scanned the table for the new face, until the secretary shifted away from the man, to the table’s three o’clock. Now closer to the light, Dean could see an amused smile perched at the corner of her lips, and even in low light, her eyes shone terribly bright.

“She will be discussing… prices with you,” said Canton, obviously pleased at his silence.

It was taking him a moment.

“Captain?” he finally sputtered.

Her shoulder lifted in a careless shrug. “Only Kate insists on titles,” she droned.

The woman sniffed. “Titles mean order,” she explained, stiffly. Obviously it was a conversation they'd had before. “Order implies full collaboration from everyone. Full collaboration means we have a chance at defeating the Empire, _captain_.”

Dean took the moment to clear his face of how impressed he was. Everything she’d been doing before— the demure glances through her eyelashes, the clasping of her hands in front of her, the way her body language deferred to the man— encouraged eyes to pass over her. She blended in when she was the real force in the interrogation he was looking for. The one who held all the cards.

 _Well, damn_.

“So, Dean,” said the captain.

He quickly readjusted his features, but it was almost too easy to be caught off guard with her as her eyes took on an intimate shine, as if a candlelight dinner was spread on the table before them instead of war strategies.

“When was the last time you saw your father?”

“Years,” he confessed.

She waited but he offered no more.

“Well, have you had any contact with him since?” asked Canton, impatiently.

“You mean like a Christmas present? Maybe you think I sent him a mug on Father’s Day— _World’s Greatest Dad._ ” Dean snorted. “No.”

Canton’s fingers twitched with annoyance. “Smartass.”

Kate threw him a warning glance.

“Okay, so,” persevered the captain, leaning on the table. If she was trying to block Canton out of view, she was doing a fine job. “No contact. Have you any idea where he might be?”

“Have you checked Kansas?”

“Yes.”

Dean blinked. “What, are you saying he just up and left home?”

“Maybe even America,” said Kate. She moved over to a world map pinned to a board and gestured. “His band of rebels has spread, causing trouble everywhere— New York, Alicante, Fedyar, British Victoria, Northumberland. All violent protests against the rising regime, matching your father’s MO.”

“So?” said Dean. “You’re all rebels. Can’t you just pick up the horn and ask to talk to him?”

“No,” she sighed. “Order. Like I said. That’s the difference between your father’s rebellion and the one we are trying to build here.”

“If any other world organization sees us flirting with your pop’s radicals, even just over coffee—” Canton clicked his tongue and slashed his finger across his neck. “We lose ‘em. We can’t risk allies when the enemy is so huge.”

“Okay,” said Dean, blowing air out of his cheeks. “Fine. So I help you find my dad, you get me a new ID, and I never have to see your sorry asses again.”

The rebels shared a glance.

“We’re actually going to need you to be a little more… _involved_ than that, Dean,” said Canton.

Dean’s eyes flicked between faces. Worry lines creased his forehead. “Wait. You’re not actually asking me to—”

“All we ask,” interrupted Kate, “is that you get Captain Oswald in front of your father without her getting shot. She can take it from there.”

The captain nodded at this confirmation of her competence.

Still, Dean stared at them, incredulous. “Look, lady, I know my dad may have raised me and all, but–”

“We know. But we think he’ll make an exception this time,” said Kate. “This appears to be a family matter.”

The muscles in Dean’s jaw tightened.

A strange thing tended to happen during interrogations. When he would observe his father’s interrogations (in the early years, before he resorted to torture), Dean noticed a pattern. There was a spiel, an empty threat to return things back to the way they were before, the false promise of redemption, a bomb– which was right now exploding in his face as Captain Oswald ushered forth a new line of questioning out of nowhere— and now...

From the moment his alias had turned to rubble, it seemed all he could do was watch, stunned, at the flash of light that came with the explosion.

And the ensuing fire that would change everything.

He braced himself.

“An Imperial cargo pilot was found stumbling around Kansas.” Kate spoke carefully, as if she knew how this might affect him (and feared it). “A deserter. Your father’s men made him disappear, but we have reason to believe he’s still alive.”

“Alright. So? Folks desert all the time.” said Dean, dismissively. He was trying to pump the brakes, because he wanted it to stop. Because, after the reveal, he knew an interrogation could turn around, from lies to truth, and suddenly, the threat would become real and much, much worse.

“This one had a message,” said Kate.

“The Empire is trying to jumpstart Armageddon,” added Canton.

“Let them,” said Dean, quickly. For he could survive the apocalypse. Let the earth burn. He would find a way by himself, as he always had. What was a bit of hellfire compared to what was coming next in the script?

He knew it well, this next part of the interrogation. Even worse than the threat of Wobani, the promise of salvation. Under his father’s tutelage, he learned how to find it before an interrogation even started. You just dug deeper and deeper into your guy’s history until you found that weak point, that thing they wanted more than survival itself, and you held it to out to them. You made sure that they _knew_ this was their only chance at it.

It terrified him to know that he could be saved, that they had found a way.

“You know what, I don’t need this,” he said, standing. “Rebellions, the Empire— It doesn’t matter. It’s just chaos and violence and unpredictable shit that comes out of nowhere and tears you to shreds. Stick me back in the hole, I don’t care.”

“But Dean,” said Captain Oswald, jumping back in. Her eyes pleaded with him to listen, and for some reason, he did. “The message is from a Sam Winchester.”

The mere name ripped his breath from his chest.

“We think he might be trying to make amends.”

And there it was. Exhaustion swept suddenly over him as he leaned back, sighing, _breathing_ , for what felt like the first time in ages.

They had found it. His salvation, wrapped up in Sam’s as it always was, with their father sat right in the middle. The perfect ingredients for a family reunion.

He sank back into his chair. Where would he send the invitations?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you try to Google it-- yes, I'm throwing in a bunch of fictional places alongside the real ones so that the ones that I lifted straight out of Star Wars don't seem completely out of the blue.
> 
> Thanks for getting this far. :)


	3. Disaster in Saradia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Clara go to investigate a lead. Though they get closer as a team, the mission does not end well.

Clara took a gamble. She saw his jaw clench at the mention of family and decided to jump on it, having pretended all week to her commanding officers that the brother  _ did _ exist and that his name  _ was  _ Sam, even though only one source had confirmed it. Because Kate had already approved Dean’s release, they had to have something on him before he arrived, and they thought they did while Clara had merely hoped and watched for the entire interrogation up until her introduction. 

_ A Sam Winchester _ , she had said.  _ A  _ because it would be foolish without it if he proved nonexistent.  _ A _ because if he did exist, his brother would not notice or care because he would be hearing a name spoken aloud despite it having died with its owner when he was just a teenager. 

Her career balanced on an utterance.

And look where it got her: At a small table littered with reports from her men in the field, with Dean Winchester. His feet rested atop the reports he deemed useless. She was torn between envy and irritation at his carelessness. 

He eyed her finger-combing her fringe back over her head.

“So how does someone like you earn captain?” he wondered aloud. He was referring to her height, her fairy-like appearance. She belonged in the USO as an entertainer, not in the army as a soldier.

But she deciphered it differently and, without looking, whipped out her response from her back pocket: “The same way a man does, just ten times better and with half the effort.” Then, she pushed his feet off the table to force him to look her in the eye when she added, “In a skirt.”

He made that face again, from when they introduced her by rank. It was a kind of mouth shrug that wiped away expression.

“How much longer is this gonna take,” he asked. “Captain?”

“Why? Got plans?”

Dean thought of his cellmate and the man’s promise to kill him, and winced.

She missed it. “We  _ are  _ looking for your father, Dean. He might not want to be found. It could be very difficult.”

She shuffled more papers, arranging the reports in order from most to least likely to give them a lead.

“Fine,” huffed Dean. “I’ll play. First, tell me more about my brother. What happened to him? Where’s he been? How the hell is he still alive?”

As if she knew anything beyond a name. Still, when her eyes flicked back up at him, he became convinced that she did know. For all he knew, she and her big brown eyes knew everything.

“First things first,” she said, choosing to bluff. “Which of these looks like your father’s doing?”

“First things first,” he echoed, if just to piss her off. “Do I call you captain or Captain Oswald?”

“You can call me Clara.”

“Hell,” said Canton. He was observing (spying) for Kate in a dark corner. “You can call her sweetheart, if it’ll get you to fetch us your father within my lifetime.”

Clearing his throat, Dean hunched over the paperwork for the first time since they had settled down. Then, he leaned over her and discarded everything on her left, what she thought were her likeliest leads.

“These make headlines,” said Dean above her protestations. It was his turn to command her gaze. “Dad doesn’t like headlines.”

Her eyes narrowed. A part of Clara did not like this. She  _ had  _ control; she did not share it. Although this time, it seemed, with Kate breathing down her neck through Canton, an exception would have to be made.

“Alright,” she said, finally. “Go on, then.”

 

After a week their search was already taking too many resources. No, actually, she hated that term. Too many men. Three. Reconnaissance missions gone wrong. One man was captured by Imperial forces. The other two were found in the bloody aftermaths of John Winchester’s signature riots.

“Try again,” she snapped at Dean, storming over to their now regular worktable.

“What, still nothin’?”

“Nothing,” she confirmed.

Clara had hoped her relationship with Dean Winchester would be brief and professional, but now it was stretching into the late hours of the night, to the mess hall and back, as they plotted new missions for her men to pursue only to find zilch, nada. The worst ones were the ones that came back with some glimmer of hope that was later snuffed out as whispers turned silent.

“Coffee?” he asked, heading over to the little table where a woman had set a tray down.

She closed her eyes in annoyance at how quickly he was learning her preferences. The other day when he asked, he served it to her with two sugars and a dash of cream, the way she liked it. He must have noticed her irritability and pacing, too, because yesterday it happened again, though this time he kept the spoon in the cup so she can stir clockwise, her hand fidgeting while her mind worked. 

It was a street that went both ways, though. For example, she learned quickly his preference for women taller than her, and more obedient to commands. Oh, and he liked his coffee black.

“Don’t bother. It’s just hot water now,” she sighed. She opened her eyes to meet his stare and, God, how did she already know what that face would look like when she did? It was a confused look. One much milder compared to one she’d seen before. Brow arched, lips pursed.

“Rationing,” she explained.

“Seriously?” he said. “This is The Rebel Alliance. The big time. They can’t even spare some of the instant stuff?”

Frustrated, he slapped his hands on the table and leaned above it. She could tell he was growing just as agitated as she was, though Dean would argue that he was even more agitated. It seemed he had traded one prison for another. At least the last one came with hard labor and occasional sunlight. Down here, he could do nothing but pace and read the next report and stab the map with a pin if it matched an area that had lit up before.

“We have to save our resources,” Clara recited from their latest leaders’ meeting. She felt numb. There was that word again. “Try to think, Dean. Where else might your father be?”

“I dunno.” The look in his eyes made him looked frailer, somehow, as he considered the world map. “Maybe I don’t know the guy as well as you think.”

The shadow that appeared at her elbow saved her from whatever she was about to say to make him feel better. 

“Captain Oswald.”

“Jenny,” she replied. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s Vastra. She’s in the field. She sent this. Sounded like it could help you.” The girl produced a telegram, delivered it, and scurried back to her computer station on the other side of the bunker.

Clara stared down at it for a while, considering, reading and re-reading. Vastra was an excellent informant, and besides, she would never lie to Jenny. 

Impatient, Dean cocked a brow. “Well?”

In response, she pushed a pin into Saradia for a total of four pins. Dean’s silence as she did so was a testament to his growing trust in her. Or maybe just in her men.

“Alright,” he said. “That leaves us with Sumandad and Saradia as the likeliest hideouts. Where are your closest men?”

He looked up at her from across the table to find her fingers dancing, her eyes distant. 

She was thinking of the three men the Alliance had already lost and their families being fed lies about their men’s secret lives. She was thinking of the time restraints Kate Stewart cuffed on her wrists that morning, along with the deafening talk of a looming Imperial missile test.

“Doesn’t matter where they are,” Clara said. She looked up and caught his gaze in the dim light. “Just grab whatever things you have. We leave at dawn.”

Dean cracked his first grin at that table, however sardonic it was. He was dying to move. “Sounds like a road trip.”

 

High above Saradia, the sun looked like a ball of hazy light in the sky. Under more peaceful circumstances, no human would choose to live beneath it. There was a lot to lose in the snow. But now also, secretly, much to gain. Half buried beneath the ice, Saradia hid a sprawling Imperial training camp, which, for its isolation and amateaur population, consequently became an easy target for non-Alliance-affiliated groups— the troublemakers, the racketeers. 

According to Clara’s intelligence, the Northern rebellion was a mess of competing forces armed to the teeth with stolen Imperial weaponry and individuals trying to sell back what they stole for food or a chance to return home. The more ambitious would gather in groups to try to take the camp, but most were rueful deserters with very basic training and equally weak wills. 

Now, however, under John Winchester’s influence, the factions united. They worked quietly like a machine that would slowly drain the camp of resources until a new shipment of supplies arrived every two weeks. It became the primary source for the Winchester forces after the Alliance disavowed him.

Clara had four moles in the camp. Each reported a higher number of weapons and supplies being siphoned from their source, an order given from within the camp instead of without.

“So?” said Dean, in the bunker. They had both already reached the same conclusion, but it was the ego of genius that longed to hear its ideas validated out loud.

“So, he’s either in the camp giving orders,” supplied Clara.

“Or he’s about to get over there and crack open a can of whoop ass for mutiny,” he finished, with a smile.

Their pilot was Clara’s fourth mole.  They met him just outside of London where he was making a dropoff to Winchester’s English forces. She buckled herself into the co-pilot’s seat, leaving Dean down in the cargo hold.

“Are you alright?” she had asked before leaving. “You look… pale.”

He buckled himself into a folding seat along the wall. No eye contact. “‘M fine,” he muttered.

Clearly, he was not. He suppressed a gag for her sake, curling over himself as much as the shoulder straps would allow. The plane had started moving.

“Alright,” said Clara, unconvinced. “I’m going to sit with the pilot, make sure he’s taking us where we need to go. I’ll check on you in a bit.”

“No need,” he managed, his voice pained.

He felt the mechanisms of the plane churn and whine beneath him. The noise filled his ears and gripped his heart so tightly that he seemed to stop breathing. Time slowed around him. Then, a shift in the gears. He imagined the wheels just a few feet under him rattling against the ground, their spokes blurring as the plane picked up incredible speed in a short distance. The cargo hold rattled and shifted around him. The front wheels lifted and slanted the aircraft, pushing him against the headrest. He swallowed bile as he jumped one, two, three times with the back wheels as they tried to escape gravity. And finally, there was just air beneath them.

A dry heave forced its way up and echoed into the cockpit. The pilot did not seem to notice above the roar of the engines, but Clara did. She glanced back at the open hatch that led to Dean and imagined herself climbing back down to him, struggling against the bumps and jolts of a plane adjusting to new altitudes. But she had a duty. To herself, to him. For the safety of the both of them, and by extension, the world, to make sure this pilot did not betray them.

_ For the safety of the world? Is that the same excuse you use to sleep at night while you watch Vick’s body perform the Devil’s Dance over and over again? _

Vick wretched again, foaming at the mouth. The plane jolted her. No, that was Dean foaming at the mouth. No-

_ Did you even bother to learn the man’s real name? _

“Captain,” said her pilot. He glanced at her anxiously. “He’s not puking on our supplies, is he? Because that’s food.”

“Right,” snapped Clara, automatically. She had been staring listlessly at the controls since take off. And were those snowflakes flying towards them? “Where are we?”

“We’re closing in on the rebel outpost now,” he told her. “Please, miss. Those boxes are cardboard.”

She shook her thoughts away. “Got it.” She undid her seatbelt and used both pilot and co-pilot chairs to balance herself as she shuffled towards the ladder, her legs asleep. “And that’s captain to you… er— Captain.”

Climbing down, she jumped the last three rungs to find Dean strapped tightly to his chair. His head seemed to lull on his neck, until he heard the sound of her landing and he lifted his eyes. He did not look any better. If anything, he was much worse.

Yet he managed a smile for her. “Hey, sweetheart.”

“Hey there.” She strutted over, taking the seat beside him. “I was just checking on the food, but don’t you look scrumptious.” She caressed his temple with the back of her hand. “I could have you for dessert,” she murmured.

“I don’t have a fever,” he informed her, with a glance towards her hand.

“No,” she agreed, “but you are sweating like a pig. Perhaps you’ll taste better as a main course.”

“Awesome. It’s a date.”

“I can’t wait.” She dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief she kept in her arsenal (READ: brassiere. All good spies should keep things there, she thought.) “My last few dates ended in disaster.”

“Did he run into your secret lipstick knife while he was searching your spy kit?” He flashed that crooked smile again, though unlike the ones before, it had no edge. It was almost charming.

“No. Actually, I found a major weapons schematic in his pants,” she said.

“Can’t see how that’s a bad thing for a spy.”

“Oh, it was a bad thing for a woman.”

The smile vanished from his face, like magic.

“Sorry,” she backtracked, immediately. “Too crass?”

His tongue curled in his mouth as he fought back another wave of nausea. “No,” he managed, “we just dropped thirty feet.”

A frequent flier, Clara hadn’t noticed. “We’re probably just landing,” she told him. “Does the flirting keep you cheerful?”

“Yeah. Feel free to pick that up again whenever.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Bossypants.” But her words failed her as his gags and groans brought her back to the alleyway.

The aircraft was really starting to dip and circle now. Consequently, he really did not seem to be getting better now, despite whatever progress they had just made with the banter. He waited with white knuckles for the spy to say something. Anything. 

Suddenly, she began again. “Have you ever given a soldier a sponge bath?”

“No,” he said, waiting for the punchline. “Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

“I was undercover as a nurse once. Funny, the things soldiers say to their nurses when their chaplains are busy with others. Like, suddenly we have the power to forgive sins in their absence.” Her eyes never lost their distance. He was grateful for the opportunity to stare, as he found them as distracting as whatever they were seeing.

Suddenly, she was staring right back, at him but not with him. “You know the best way to do it? Even though they’re in a tent with at least five of their peers and three other hospital staff, all you have you do is talk to them. Tell them what you’re doing while you touch them in places they've probably never been touched by a girl before. You tell them,  _ And here we have your arms, your chest, your legs, your toes _ . You rewrap their ankles when the bandage wears out. And they love you because they can feel every part of themselves and they feel very grateful for that ability. They feel grateful, too, that no one has shot those parts off of them yet.

“But you can be destroyed even with all those parts intact, by something as small as a bullet.”

Dean touched her hand, still searching for a fever where it had drifted on the side of his neck. It seemed to work as it had on him just moments ago when she touched his temple. It distracted him from his pain. And as she floated back to him, it appeared his touch had distracted her from hers.

“We’re here,” he told her.

 

They were smuggled out of the plane in cargo boxes of food. A kitchen aide, an ally of one of Clara’s sources, helped them out and guided them through the outpost’s series of underground tunnels and cells but to no avail. Everyone they spoke to knew nothing more about John Winchester besides their own personal prejudices.

“The guy’s just a dick,” said one rebel.

“Tell me about it,” said Dean.

Standing within earshot, Clara peeked over at him from the corner of her eye. She detected not a hint of irony as Dean nodded back at this guy, who clearly was a part of some sort of rebellion against the rebellion. 

She made note.

“I hear he’s got a son,” continued the man, “who’s building a giant weapon for the Empire.”

Dean’s brow creased. “What?”

“I know, right? Can’t imagine what he must’a done to that kid to make him go all AWOL on him.”

She dodged his glance by diving back into a conversation with another rebel, who also happened to be in earshot.

“Hey! Do you even realize what that man has done for us?” he began, heatedly. “He’s brought us food. Infrastructure.”

“I didn’t see him hook this fuckin’ water supply up. Or did I miss him blowing up another thirty feet of tunnel while I was diggin’ up the latrine? No, because we did that! We should be in charge of this revolution, not some asshole in Kansas.”

Dean’s eyes met Clara’s. They flickered down to ground once, twice, until her eyes followed them to the waists of the men gathering around and urging the original argument towards violence. 

This place is a damn powderkeg, Dean thought as he slipped a gun from a rebel’s waistband.

“Did you just steal my gun?” the rebel said. Practically screamed, really. Dean raised his empty hands and smiled in peaceful surrender, but the man repeated it louder, word spreading like wildfire.

“Gun?”

“Who took out their gun?”

And they all seemed to realize at once.  _ Guns were fair game. _

And just like that, all hell broke loose. Dean’s pickpocket victim swung around with a right hook aimed right at his face. Dean took it, shoved back, and stuck the bottom of his shoe in the guy’s chest to forge a path to the other side of the tunnel, the last place he’d seen Clara. She hadn’t gotten far, staying low and hacking at ankles and behind knees, punching guts where guns were held up in two trembling hands.

Dean leaned protectively over her as bullets drove into the dirt above her head and kicked aside the body that fell in her path. Accidentally, he pinned her against the wall as a man careened into him. He shoved him away.

“Where are we going?” he shouted above the din.

She flung herself around a corner so they could escape the dozens of swinging elbows and bursting gunshots. Against the wall, beneath his arms, she looked so small, her eyes so wide and, for the first time, without light.

“I-I don’t know!” she shrieked. “We didn’t have time to get schematics.”

A hand grabbed her elbow.

Dean wound up his left hook.

“Wait!” a boy shrieked. The kid looked like he had only just turned twenty.

“Rigsy,” gasped Clara. “Can you get us out?”

“Take me with you,” he demanded.

“Done,” said Dean, before Clara could do something stupid to slow them down, like try to negotiate. “Go. Go, go!”

He followed up in the back of their group, swatting hands away, shooting into thick mobs where the tunnels narrowed with his stolen piece. In the crush of the crowd, he would sometimes lose sight of Clara’s head as she ducked and weaved, and once, when he reunited with her, she’d lost sight of their guide. They turned corner after corner— Clara, small and quick, leading while Dean barreled ruthlessly through the crowd— until Rigsy reappeared and finally brought them to a small hangar made of blocks of ice.

“Where’s the aircraft?” Clara asked.

Dean peered into the bright snow covered horizon. “Out there!”

A straggling group of a dozen rebels formed black dots moving towards it. More leaked out of the same door they’d come from, searching for an escape.

Clara picked up a rifle from a fallen man, stuffed a gun into a pocket of her parka, and threw a loaded clip to Dean. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself forward at a sprint.

The loosely packed snow slipped beneath them as they pushed ahead. Incredibly, Dean couldn’t help but notice the way Clara’s hood bounced with every step, sometimes falling over her head until she pushed it back. It would have made him laugh, if he hadn’t been counting a rhythm with his breaths. 

The air was like shards of ice in his lungs. He waited for them to numb like the rest of his face, but it seemed his olfactory systems were refusing to give in. Even the insides of his nostrils burned. When he turned forward again he saw the straggling rebels grow larger as they got nearer. He skittered to a stop, raised his gun. Picked them off, one, two, three. The rest dropped down into the snow.

They raced further, Dean at the head now. Clara had fallen back, glancing backwards too much at the destruction they were leaving behind, with Rigsy tugging her along by the elbow. When the rebels started again to their feet, Dean shot once, twice indiscriminately into the air until they planted themselves down again, face first. Dean, Rigsy, and Clara sprinted past the rebels’ three fallen comrades until finally they were on top of them. 

Another fist fight ensued, both sides exhausted and Dean without a wall to shove Clara against in defense. But as he watched, she jammed the butt of the rifle into the faceless hood of one of the men and watched him fall, a battle cry streaming bloody from her lips. Dean decided she would be fine, until “ _ Grenade! _ ” Rigsy screamed.

Dean tackled her at the waist. She folded beneath him, her hair in his hands as he covered her head and prayed in her ear.  _ Christ!  _ The grenade went off in a flash of light and snow, which limited the damage it did to Dean physically. His ears were shot, though, and he could only tell Clara was shouting for Rigsy by the shape of her mouth. He pulled her to her feet by the hood, shot down the last two surviving rebels as they screamed (laughed?) at the base of their aircraft’s loading ramp. A third shadow appeared over their bodies and Dean turned with bloody fist only to find Rigsy,  _ friggin’ kid _ , racing once again beside him. Dean followed a stumbling Clara up the ramp and pulled it up, Rigsy or no. Without asking for permission, the kid clambered up the ladder to the cockpit. Soon the ground was shaking with telltale signs of takeoff, to which Dean succumbed.

Clara wrapped an arm around his torso and heaved him up with a grimace. Knees shaking with exhaustion, she threw him into a seat and strapped him down before doing the same for herself.

“Go, Rigsy!” she tried shouting. She couldn’t hear herself but damn could she feel the effort in her throat.

The cargo hold shook with takeoff, but Dean felt too tired, too goddamned hurt to feel fear. His eyes fell shut.


	4. Regrouping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the disaster in Saradia, Clara and Dean, along with their new companion Rigsy, figure out their next move.

Dean surfaced first. He feared he’d gone completely deaf, the only noise a high-pitched ringing in his head. But when he climbed up to the cockpit, he found a line of pine trees in the window. The ringing must have been the sound of silence. Beneath the controls, the kid called Rigsy was curled up, breathing, from the looks of it.

A gasp echoed from below. “Dean?” he heard a voice croak.

He climbed down, his whole body aching. Clara. When he left, he didn’t want to look at her for fear of the damage he might see.

“Dean,” her voice beckoned.

He looked. A split lip sat beside a purpling bruise on the corner of her mouth. A black eye, a gnarly cut on her cheek, and who knew what else beneath her parka. He picked up his easy smile.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he drawled. “Worried about me?”

“To death,” she said. “Rigsy?”

“He set us down in some sort of forest,” he said. “Sun’s at that weird angle, though, so we didn’t get far. First aid kit?”

Clara pointed at her duffel bag and unbuckled herself, easing out of the restraints. Definitely a bruise on her torso, she thought, remembering a particularly hard misplaced elbow to the gut. She felt her head. No blood, hopefully no concussion. With her hand in her hair she remembered what Dean did for her in the snow. What she had done to him in return. Immediately, the shame rushed in and she felt a wall of tension rise between them.

“Dean,” she said, again. What was to come next? You couldn’t exactly say thanks and sorry for not telling you everything in the same breath.

But he seemed to understand, holding up a palm as he returned with the first aid kit. “Don’t mention it.”

She interpreted that as  _ You’re welcome _ and crossed thanks off her list. But she didn’t quite know how to begin to say the other thing.

He didn’t want to hear it right now anyways. Instead, he popped open the first aid kit and peered around the cloud of tension between them.

“You know, if this were a real spy flick, this would be the part after the big fight where the girl, in a torn and revealing shirt, would tenderly clean the hero’s wounds until they ended up rolling on silk sheets in a slow motion montage.”

“But I’m the spy here,” observed Clara. “Which  makes you the girl.”

Dean pursed his lips, processing.

“Well?” she said, leaning back Cocky and confident, channeling him from the first day they worked together. “Pop off your shirt, quick as you like.”

 

“So what now?” asked Rigsy. He had come down about an hour afterwards with scrapes, bruises, and a limp, all of which Clara was treating now, with homemade ice packs from a cut up parachute and recently fallen snow.

“Well, Saradia was a total bust,” said Dean. “Which leaves Sumandad.”

“Sumandad?” repeated Rigsy, incredulously. “You’re kidding me. That’s, like, a whole other continent.”

“It’s at the tip of Africa.”

“It’s a warzone— ow!”

Clara looked up at him with a wary glance. The swelling in her eye had receded a little after an hour of pressing ice to it, so she had hoped her little glares would be rendered as effective as they usually were. “Please don’t fight us on this, Rigsy,” she said. “We’ve done enough of that already.”

“Fine… You probably saved my life back there, you know,” he said, softening. “Okay. What are you guys looking for?”

“John Winchester,” said Dean.

Rigsy chuckled to himself. “Man, you too?”

“What, do you have a problem with him?” asked Clara.

“No. I don’t know the guy well enough. I just follow orders.” He shook his head with a self-deprecating smile. “Always following orders.”

“You a deserter from the camp?” asked Dean.

“Yeah.” The kid’s eyes lowered with shame.

“Recruited?”

“Enlisted, yeah.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“If you knew the Empire was evil, why’d you volunteer to work for it?”

Upon hearing the hardness in his voice, Clara glanced over at Dean. He was standing defensively, arms crossed, knees locked. His scowl seemed etched in stone.

“I didn’t know it was evil,” Rigsy said. “I lived in a bad neighborhood. Everyone was beating on me. The soldiers, the kids on the street. Just shouting at me, like I was nothing. All I saw was an opportunity to be more.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean sneered. “And did you find  _ more?” _

“Dean!” Clara snapped. She figured what this was about for him, but that did not entitle him to shout at a stranger who had made one mistake for which he was trying to repent. She sought the brighter side. “Rigsy, when did you decide to desert?”

“Our first mission outside of camp,” he said. His eyes fell away into memory. “A ruckus at a nearby village. We were sent to quell it. Three days of marching and camping in the snow. My fingers turned blue. When we got there, the whole place was on fire. The men attacked us with sticks. We fought back with bullets. During the fighting, our COs rounded up the women and children. Gathered us around them. Told us to shoot— no survivors.”

“And did you shoot?” Clara asked.

“No,” he replied. “I got out. I found the Rebellion. I found you.”

She arched a brow at Dean. “Satisfied?”

 

They took a vote. Two out of three wanted to spend the night in the forest to rest up for the next fight, but as they soon realized, the sun never set in the north. It just kind of hung there in the sky, giving no hint as to whether it was rising in the east or moving towards the west. So, Clara reset her watch.

“Twelve hours,” she intoned. “And then we return to base to refuel, like we planned.”

By the end of the first hour, Rigsy jumped up abruptly from his corner, complaining of the cold. He retreated to the cockpit in the hopes that the ever present sun had warmed up the window. In his rush, he dropped the hatch to the cargo hold, leaving the other two in almost complete darkness.

Dean dreamed of the cave. He could still feel the cool rush of fresh air entering the crack left by the boulder that sealed him inside. The squirming of the infant in his arms as it woke. It opened its mouth with a sticky noise and gurgled the beginnings of a loud cry.

“Mommy’s coming, Sammy,” whispered Dean. “Hang on.”

As if on cue, the boulder rolled aside with a burst of light. A man’s silhouette shielded him from the brightness.

“Dean.”

“Dad.”

“Give that thing to me.”

“No! You’ll hurt him.”

“What  _ him, _ Dean?”

His father wrestled the bundle from his arms with one hand and held it into the light, while his son cried, expecting to see his brother’s crushed skull. But the boy’s breath ended in a confused whimper. His brother had turned into a bomb, round and cartoonish.

“Sam!” Dean shouted. His voice transformed into his own. “Sammy! Where is he?”

“He’s  _ gone _ , Dean.”

John lit the fuse. Handed it to him.

“Now, throw it.”

He obeyed the order. Dove out of the cave. Chucked it as far into the woods as he was able. But the cave had moved when he wasn’t looking. It faced a hillside. Down below, he saw the glittering lights of a village asleep. The bomb fell. The village erupted in shards of wood and flame. His father clapped him on the back with a laugh.

“No,” he moaned, as the cries of the wounded rose up to his ears.

“You just killed a whole town of Imperialists, kid. Officers, supporters.”

“And their families.”

“Whose kids would have grown up the same way as them.”

Dean looked up at him, horrified by the flames reflected in his father’s dark eyes. He shoved him aside. Returning to the woods, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sam! Sam!”

The dreamscape rippled and changed, until the trees were replaced by people. He recognized them. The desperate, the hopeless, the ones who needed his help. They were all looking for something— loved ones or revenge or a way out or the strength to fight back. Shouting at him to give it to them, but he already had. He remembers all of them. Louisa from Bondurant. Aaron from Enniscorthy. He had stolen for them— food clothing, weapons. But they were converging on him. Tearing at his clothes, shouting in his face. He would help them again, of course, but when would he get what he wanted? Who was going to help him find who he was looking for?

“Sam!” he said, throwing his own desire into the din of names and things and places. “Sammy!”

Because who knows, maybe they would change. Maybe they would help him for once. But all he could feel was the weight of these poor souls bringing him down to his knees. Darrah from Amersham. Leo from Havers Hill. Danica from Foxwick. Jack from Pinedale. Clara Oswald from… from…

“Dean!” she screamed in his face.

Was someone looking for him for once?

_ “Dean!” _

His forehead smacked something fleshy when he gasped back to consciousness.

“My eye,” Clara moaned in the darkness. “You bloody idiot. The swelling was going down.”

“My bad,” panted Dean. He shook his head to reorient himself to the new darkness, to the girl who hid in it. “I can get you more snow.”

“Go on, then!”

Quickly he returned with ice packs, and a question. “Why’d you wake me?”

“Your ‘rest’ didn’t sound very restful,” she told him. 

She curled up against the wall nursing her eye, the other eye watching the white light of the reflected sun disappear as the door closed behind him. In the darkness, she listened to him groan as he slumped down across from her.

“Where are you from, anyways?” he asked, after some time.

“Blackpool, England.”

“So the accent’s real, then.”

“So are my breasts,” she replied. Crass, she thought, but she was probing, trying to match his humor.

“Well, yeah. No one’s paying for those.”

So he took the bait. 

She scoffed, and though tired, she would try following the line. “And whose would they pay for? Second Lieutenant Houlihan's?”

Dean made a choking sound, which made her smile. “Oh, don’t pretend like you weren’t ogling her.”

“I wasn’t-”

“You have a type, Dean Winchester,” she interrupted. “I’ve seen your file. Interviewed almost everyone you’ve ever helped. It’s quite a selection. A whole trail of beautiful girls who sing your praises.”

His silence was long enough for the laughter to die.

“Did you? Really?” he asked.

She blinked. Had she misstepped? 

“Yeah,” she said. “We had to make sure you were worth the manpower. Wobani is—well, let’s just say the Rebellion doesn’t make breakouts like that happen very often.”

“And how— What were they doing?”

“Singin’ your praises. Like I said. They were… They’re good. They were grateful to you. Happy, under the circumstances.”

When he fell silent again, she detected the presence of monsters in the dark. She wanted to reach out to him but she had no idea how or where he was. She decided she would endeavor to scare them away instead. 

She searched for the words from writers and philosophers. Finally, she tried, “There are no good men in war. They’ve all turned by now, caught in this wave of history and glory. But you try. You try, and I think that’s kinda the point.” 


End file.
